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- [Nancy Guthrie] Hello, I'm Nancy Guthrie,
and I'm so excited to be with you to dive into the
book of Nehemiah as we look together in this session at Chapters 1 and 2.
The book of Nehemiah opens by telling us the who, what, where,
and when of what we're about to read. Look with me in verse one.
"The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month
of Chislev in the 20th year as I was in Susa the Citadel." So the who is Nehemiah.
Nehemiah is a Jew living far away from Jerusalem. In fact, he's probably never
seen Jerusalem. His great grandparents who likely lived in the generation of prophets
like Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel, they knew it well. But long
before Nehemiah was born, they saw the armies of Babylon march
into Jerusalem and they were taken into exile into Babylon.
Then in his grandparents' generation, the Persian Empire took over the reins
of power from the Babylonians. And when their King, Cyrus, announced that
all of the Jews who were scattered throughout the Empire were free to go home
to Jerusalem, Nehemiah's grandparents and parents likely waved goodbye to friends
and family who were headed back to Jerusalem to resettle and rebuild the
temple under Zerubbabel. Thirteen years before what we're
about to read in Nehemiah, there were more goodbyes as Ezra took a
group made up mostly of Levites to reestablish worship in the rebuilt Temple
in Jerusalem. We learned at the end of Chapter 1, why Nehemiah himself did
not go. He says in the last verse, "Now I was a cupbearer to the king."
So this helps us to understand the where and the when that we've just read
about in the first verse. Nehemiah is in Susa,
the Summer Palace of the king of Persia, where he serves in the trusted position
of wine taster, confidant, and companion to the king.
And it's the 20th year of the reign of this King, Artaxerxes. The next verse,
verse two, tells us the what, what happened to Nehemiah as he was
serving the king in Susa in about 445 BC. He writes in Verse 2, "Hanani,
one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them
concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile,
and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me,
'The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble
and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed
by fire.' As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days,
and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven." It's clear that even
though Nehemiah is far away from Jerusalem, his heart is there with the
people who are there. Clearly, he's been brought up in the home of a part
of the faithful remnant living in exile. He knows about Yahweh and Yahweh's
covenant promises to his people. He knows that Jerusalem is the city at the
center of God's saving purposes in the world. The city to which God Himself
descended to dwell in the temple among his people. God had promised to bring his
people home to this city, but the reality is that God's people are,
according to Verse 3, in great trouble and shame. What is the great trouble
and shame? The wall is broken down and its gates destroyed by fire
so there's no security in the city, no commercial development.
Even though people have been free to return, homes are not being rebuilt there.
The the broken down wall served as a shameful reminder that God had fulfilled
the covenant curses because of His people's sins. Nehemiah knows that ever
since God brought his people, Israel, out of Egypt
so that they could worship Him,
and ever since he descended to dwell in the temple in Jerusalem,
God has intended for his people to live in his land and worship Him as those who love
the Lord with all of their heart, soul, and might. They were supposed to be a
kingdom of priests, a living demonstration of Yahweh's goodness and glory
in the world, a declaration of his salvation to the world. But at this point,
Jerusalem seems to be declaring that there is nothing to be gained in worshiping the
one true God. That His promises have not proved true. Nehemiah's heart is broken
by the things that break the heart of God, which really is the mark of someone who
truly knows and loves God. His heart is broken,
but he knows what to do. He knows where to go with his
broken heart. He turns to the one person who loves his people more than he does.
The one person who is more committed to the future of Jerusalem than he is.
The one person who has the power to deal with the great trouble and shame
of his people. He begins to pray to his God, and he keeps praying.
Nehemiah is clear on who he is praying to. Look with me in Verse 5,
where we see that he asks the great and awesome God to deal with the
great trouble. This isn't just any God. This is the God, who according to Verse 5,
keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep
His commandments. This is the God, according to Verse 10,
who redeemed his people by his great power and by his strong hand.
Nehemiah is praying about his people to a God who has a long history of protecting
and providing for His people. Nehemiah is also clear on who God's
people are. They are people with whom he has made a covenant.
People who have sinned against him. Though God has loved them with a
steadfast love, they have failed to love and obey Him. But Nehemiah is not merely
pointing his finger at them as he confesses on behalf of his people.
He counts himself and his family among them. He says at the end of Verse 6,
"Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you
and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you
commanded Your servant Moses." Nehemiah is not coming to God suggesting
that his people deserve for God to do something about their great trouble
and shame. He's asking God to give them what they do not deserve.
You see, that's grace, getting what we don't deserve.
Nehemiah is asking God to act in grace toward his people.
He's asking God to do what he promised to do.
Reminding God of his promise that he made so long before,
he says in Verse 8 when he prays, "Remember the word that you commanded Your
servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful,
I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my
commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost
parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I
have chosen to make my name dwell there.'" Nehemiah is showing you and me how
to pray. You see, prayer isn't coming up with our lists of what we think God ought
to do and putting the pressure on him to do it, prayer is asking God to do what He
has promised to do, asking Him to be true to His word, which He always is.
Through Moses and the prophets, God promised that he would scatter His
people when they were unfaithful to Him. And God has kept that difficult promise.
But God also promised that when His people repented, He would gather them and bring
them back to the land He had given to them back to Himself. So Nehemiah is praying
asking God to do what He said He would do, asking Him to gather His people
to Jerusalem and make it a place where God would dwell with His people in such a way
that would demonstrate and declare His goodness and glory to the nations.
Nehemiah ended his prayer asking God to give him success in seeking permission and
help from the king to be a part of rebuilding the walls in Jerusalem.
As a trusted servant of King Artaxerxes, Nehemiah would have been well aware
of an earlier attempt to rebuild Jerusalem's walls that had been reported
to the king as rebellion, and that on his orders work on the walls had been brought
to an abrupt stop. But he also knew from the Proverbs that the king's heart is a
stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will.
So he asked God to turn King Artaxerxes' heart toward granting his request.
And that's exactly what God did. Nehemiah told the king how long he would
be gone and asked him for protection from potential enemies as well as resources
for the rebuilding. Look in Verse 8, in Chapter 2, he says, "And the king granted
me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me." Nehemiah knew it wasn't
his brilliant tactics or winning personality that caused the king
to say yes, but that the good hand of his great God was at work for his people who
were in great trouble. God was showing grace to His people who
were in disgrace. When Nehemiah got to Jerusalem, he surveyed the city by the
light of the moon, finding giant stones that had once been embedded in the city's
great wall, laying half buried embedded in the earth. He looked at the ruined stones
and he saw them as a picture of the people of God, broken down, ruined,
needing to be renewed, reclaimed, restored. So he gathered the people
together and we read that he says to them in Chapter 2, Verse 17,
"You see the trouble we are in,
how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned.
Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision."
Nehemiah has been there only three days and yet he speaks as one with God's people
about the trouble we are in, inviting them to join him in building
the wall, assuring them of God's divine guidance and provision in the work.
In Verse 18, we read that he says, "Let us rise up and build."
So they strengthened their hands for the good work. The people in great trouble
began to get everything ready for doing the good work so that the name of their
great God would be given the honor He is due in the world. But not everyone was
excited about the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Nehemiah records in Verse 19,
That "when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and
Geshem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us
and said, 'What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling
against the king?" Throughout the Bible, ever since God promised that the offspring
of the serpent would be at enmity with the seed of the woman, we've witnessed the
enemies of God and God's people despise and seek to defeat the building of the
kingdom of God. And here we see it again. But Nehemiah knows that every time the
seed of the serpent has sought to defeat the seed of the woman,
God's people have prevailed. Nothing and no one can defeat the purposes
God has for His people, His church. And at this point in history,
God's purpose for his people is for them to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
So Nehemiah replied to those opposing him, in Verse 20, he says,
"The God of heaven will make us prosper. And we His servants will arise and build,
but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem." Nehemiah made it clear that
the work of building the walls was not generated from a human scheme.
It wasn't dependent upon human ability and it wasn't vulnerable to human opposition.
Nehemiah was building the physical Kingdom of God in his day. It's a picture for us
of the kingdom God is building in our day, His church. We as living stones are being
built into a holy community on our cornerstone, Jesus Christ.
There's plenty of opposition in this world that we may think at times presents
a real threat to the church, but let's allow Nehemiah's confidence
in God to become our confidence as we labor to proclaim the Lord's name in the
midst of a hostile environment. As we seek to be part of what God is doing
through His church in our generation, with Nehemiah, let's say,
the God of heaven will make us prosper and we His servants will arise and build.
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